


Chassis

by FatalCookies



Category: Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24694621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FatalCookies/pseuds/FatalCookies
Summary: In the process of building the Master.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka)
Kudos: 8





	Chassis

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the art found [here](https://fatalcookies.tumblr.com/post/105409993563/shh-im-wondering-i-painted-it-o-flesh-is).

Flesh is flesh, and nothing more.

It is why the construction does not concern him, not in so many words. It has to work, of course, he has to make it _function_ , but when he is building, his mind is on functionality and, besides that, _what the Master will think of it_.

Because that is the key to it all, isn’t it. The point is that the mind makes connections to the flesh, interprets the flesh. The flesh fits or it does not. Regeneration is the mind changing and the flesh contorting to fit it. He had been soft once but by the end his mind was dark and cornered, and the body contorted to fit. He is angles and bones, shoulders, elbows and knees, and a pair of soft lips swollen with bitter sorrow.

He remembers the Master’s mind, and the flesh falls into place. Spine ramrod straight, torso medium, limbs unremarkable. Face dignified. Nose, dignified. Cheekbones strong and jutting. Hair smattered with grey.

It is the eyes that get him. Windows to the soul and all that nonsense, but the trick is that they cannot look like a becoming mirror for the Master’s still-living mind. Those eyes, they cannot yet be him. The rest, yes, but those—they need the intelligence, their spark. They need the mind behind them. They need to be alive.

Those eyes are the culmination of flesh and thought, and it is at that moment that the Doctor looks at this mass of metal and parts and sees in it the unspeakable void that must be filled. Oh, how many spaces between the atoms he has missed. How much the Master still has to take up…

If this works. If he ever takes it up again.

After all, the flesh is nothing more than flesh, without the mind inside.

The Doctor looks at the Master’s dead, dim, and empty eyes—one covered now and looking life-like, the other exposed and surrounded by metal chassis—and he feels his hearts crumble like the dusty white skeletons of flies. He wraps his arms around the Master’s neck…

and he misses him.


End file.
